COMMONS Speaker John Bercow invited Mohammed Shafiq of the Ramadan Foundation to his Commons residence last night – despite Shafiq defending an Imam that was arrested on suspicion of child abuse, Politicalite can exclusively reveal.

Shafiq, who is the Cheif Executive of the Ramadan Foundation – tweeted yesterday evening that he was “Honoured to be invited tonight to the House of Commons Speaker’s John Bercow private residence for an Iftari dinner in Parliament.”

Mr Shafiq defended and praised Imam Abdul Rauf, 52 who was charged with two section 47 assaults against two boys aged 10 and 12 and 19 charges of section 39 assault against unidentified children.

Shafiq, who has been described as the self-appointed media commentator for all things Islamic, used his high profile media image to try and dispel and undermine rumours circulating regarding an Imam at one of the local mosques in a video on Facebook.

Shafiq reportedly posted the video to a Facebook group for the Milaad Committee in Rochdale.

In the video, he sat next to the Imam and described him as a “Great man who wouldn’t hurt children” in an attempt to shut down criticism of the local Imam through cries of Islamophobia.

A few weeks later the Imam was arrested on various counts of physical abuse against children.

Mr Shafiq swiftly deleted the video but not before local journalist ‘Rochdale Uncovered’ got hold of a copy and sent it to Politicalite.

Shafiq was even used as a commentator by Sky and ITV News during their one year anniversary reports on the Manchester Arena terror attack which left 22 people, mainly children dead.

In his Twitter bio, he says he appears as a paper reviewer on BBC Radio 5 Live.

Rochdale Uncovered who shared the video with us said: “Mr.Shafiq [is] now being exposed as a practitioner of taquiyya (In Islam, Taqiya or taqiyya is a precautionary pretence or denial of religious belief and practice in the face of persecution) in an attempt to silence criticism of his Community and its actions.

Our mainstream media are so blinded to his taquiyya that even when at best his judgement is exposed as being somewhat lacking or at worst intentionally misleading, they still insist on using him as an authority on all things community-related.”

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